Good intentions at 8am. Oh Shit at 4pm.
3-4 am is usually when I start my wake up routine. Not by design or on purpose. It is thanks to peri-menopause and my routine wake up of 530am from when I had a regular job. 3-4 am is a great time to some up with some super good intentions for the rest of the day. Wake up, exercise, eat a healthy breakfast, clean the kitchen, plan the day your kid will have, shower, do something ultra productive.
Others may have this morning good intention routine as well. Especially if they have a lot on their mental plate, the list of necessary priorities for others they will have to assume themselves because that is the role they have given themselves or they are the only person others can depend on. The good intentions seem so realistic and manageable in the am. They may even plan the day and schedule more time than needed to ensure things go smoothly and anticipate the un-anticipatable.
By noon, a few of the good intentions are done. Hunger pangs to deviate from the good intentions are mitigated. If there were any surprises, these are triaged, dealt with, or scheduled for later. The good intentions are still doable and the future day looks sunny, maybe a few clouds, but it is still a day straight out of the Toy Story set.
Then we, me and you and them, enter the later parts of the day. As the afternoon hours go on, energy spent on the other, earlier, good intentions has entered the void and disappeared. Once we hit the almost-end-of-the-day, there is a shift. The end is so near it is felt like a tug down in energy. Now most other good intentions scheduled for the day feel a lot more optional and unnecessary.
Look at the clock. Oh SHIT, it’s 4?! I’m hungry, you are hungry, everyone is getting hungry. Did we have a good intention for dinner ready? If so, it’s probably forgotten. Or doesn’t look that appealing because now the energy and mental bandwidth is gone. What’s frozen? What’s leftover? What was the plan for that eggplant? Are we sure the USDA still thinks tomato sauce counts as a vegetable? This is going to be too exhausting and not worth it. We were so looking forward to a serene evening doing something else other than cooking dinner and having to clean the kitchen for the second time today.
No wonder cooking at home is considered a very unenjoyable event of an already busy day in the lives of many low income (or no income) people struggling with the same responsibilities of life we all face, and more usually. We should all know by now how difficult, expensive, time consuming, and unfair being poor is in this country. When your mental bandwidth does not include meal planning and preparation, and many donations come as highly processed boxed and frozen dinners, there is no reason to assume those trying to get ahead and be self sufficient will be cooking balanced, healthy meals many of us take for granted daily. Planning for the later part of the day or the next day just might not even happen. The peripheral vision does not include what kind of calories are eaten. The fact that calories can be consumed is part of the central vision for those focused on just getting by to the next day.
But cooking at home and having control over what is cooked and eaten is still a priority, even when it might seem unattainable for now. Finding ways to make it more attainable, enjoyable, and keeping the good intentions going can be done. As we all can find ourselves in this boat at times, the methods for resurrecting the good intention form the dumpster can apply to all.
Take a 5 minute time out. Some would call this taking time to be mindful. As you read my writing, you will find that I hate the term mindful and I really dislike all things mindfulness. I like to say time out. Time out of responsibility. Time out of responding to others. Time out of engaging in anything other than the back of the eyelids, sitting or laying down alone, and a distraction, like silence. No body scan, chimes, or the AI voice of a privileged person. This time out might extend to 10 minutes, 15 on occasion. Like a nap in the middle of the day, now there is a new, separate day to wake up to. Now good intentions may actually have a chance, at least more of a chance than before.
Ok. Good afternoon. Dinner. So we’ve got some eggplant, left over spaghetti sauce, and some sourdough. Wasn’t there some lentils in the back of the pantry? Are we feeling like classic rock? Or NPR? Maybe we CAN be entertained by the child’s Minecraft videos while we cook dinner. At least the kid is at our side. Should we ask the kid to stir the eggplant while we get some other stuff together? If we gave them a knife and a loaf of bread, what could happen that resembles a life skill? Can the kid Google tips on cooking lentils? If we label kitchen clean up as being helpful instead of a chore, would it get done faster?
Fast forward 30 minutes. Dinner done, eaten, any complaining is brushed away because taking criticism is easier in a new day as well. Now on to the next good intention that would have faded into the void at 4pm.
Have a good night.